


I've Heard It In The Chillest Land

by mediumrawr



Series: The Madwoman In The Attic [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediumrawr/pseuds/mediumrawr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She looked dead. It was a morbid thought, but she couldn’t get away from it. Faith had experience with this shit.</p><p>The third Madwoman In The Attic story. Written for the Winter Of Faith 2010/11.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 She looked dead. It was a morbid thought, but she couldn’t get away from it. Faith had experience with this shit. The breathing tube, the IV, and the stitches all added nothing to her color.

Giles hadn’t looked up when she’d put her hand on his arm. They looked at the woman on the cot.

“She was saying my name when they brought her in,” he said.

“I heard,” said Faith. “I’ve made the calls. Willow’s getting Dawn.”

“You see the bruises on her arms?” he asked. “The new ones?”

Faith didn’t say anything to that.

“She woke up in the middle of surgery. The anesthetist didn’t know she was a Slayer. They had to hold her down.”

She imagined it: waking up, her chest cut open, half-blinded by light and only dimly seeing men with masks and knives; screaming; the men panicking and holding her down and injecting her with something. “Jesus, B,” she said.

“It’s not their fault,” Giles told her. “Half the Watchers hadn’t read the  _Modern Approach to Slayer Physiology_ either.”

“G-”

“Why was she in London? Did she come to see me? Wouldn’t she have called?”

“G-”

“What about Xander?”

Faith didn’t answer at first - it took her a bit to realize this one was a real question. “I tried the last number I had for him. There was a woman, but she didn’t know him.”

Giles wiped his glasses on his sleeve. Faith glanced at the cane that rested against his chair. It was the last reminder of the fire. Even the cane was temporary. “I need you,” he said.

She didn’t say the first thing that popped inappropriately into her head -  _what, now?_ \- or the second -  _anything_. “Yeah?”

“I need to know who did this,” he said. His voice had been flat all along, but Faith hadn’t realized why until this very moment.

Buffy lay there, still and white as death. There was a gash on her face that was going to leave a long scar. Faith imagined the conversation that she was going to have with Buffy and Willow about concealer.

 _If she makes it_ , Faith reminded herself. That was what the doctor said, with different words.  _Still in critical condition_ , he said.

“You got it,” said Faith. She left him watching there and went out into the hallway. When she’d called Willow, a nurse had snarled at her, jabbing at a sign with an obvious warning, so Faith went all the way out to the atrium to make the very last call.

\---

 _Why would you think I would know where Buffy’s been?_ Angel had asked, all innocent-faced. She could tell, even over the phone.

Always look both ways before jimmying a lock, like momma always said. The lock clicked faster than she expected, and she almost stumbled over herself as the door slid open. She didn’t, though.

 _If you haven’t had someone following Buffy at least since you took a job as a criminal mastermind, I’m Mother Teresa_ , she had told him.

Buffy had settled on a rented studio flat. Faith hadn’t talked to the manager, but she guessed that Buffy must have been planning on staying a few weeks at least. It was pretty empty, as far as flats went. They’d all gotten used to living without their creature comforts, after their creature comforts had been sucked into an exploding portal to a hell dimension. Except for Giles, who’d had some stuff in storage in London.

Two cards stood, half-open, on the dresser. One, from Dawn, looked like it was from last Christmas. The other was from Xander. It contained no clues to his location. Beside the cards was a folded paper, well-worn. Faith read:

 _Buffy,_

 _I’m afraid I’ve run out of things to say. Know that, if ever you have need of me, I will come._

 _Yours,_

 _R. Giles_.

Faith put the paper back where she’d found it. Dealing with that particular mess had turned out to be way above her pay-grade. Anyway, there was a laptop sitting closed on the corner desk. Faith went to it and opened it. It buzzed its way to wakefulness and the desktop without even requesting a password.

“Really, B?”

The browser history, however, had an interesting revelation. Buffy had been trying to plot a route to a supermarket in Kennington, which wasn’t particularly weird except that the kitchenette was fully stocked and Kennington was way the fuck out of the way. It was worth a look, Faith decided. She shut the laptop before she went, though. It wasn’t hers; it was right to leave it the way she’d found it. She was trying to be better about that.

\---

There was a bouncer in front of the supermarket. More specifically, there was a bouncer in front of the cellar door next to the supermarket, looking for all the world like a bored assistant manager. A very large bored assistant manager. With weird ears.

“You’re new,” he said.

She had a feeling her usual come-hither look wasn’t going to work. “So?” she asked.

“I don’t know you,” he said.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” she said, no part of which was actually exactly true. “Blonde, a little shorter than me, kind of pretty in a ‘We’re not even going to hold hands until the third-’”

“I remember her,” he said. “She talked to the big guy.”

“Uh-huh. Is he in?”

“Yeah.”

So Faith swung open the cellar door and climbed on down the stairs.

It was dark. The lighting, which was poor, barely illuminated the barely human shapes which packed the huge room. That blasting and pumping noise was nothing like music and everything like self-inflicted deafness. It was open at four in the afternoon.

 _When you have to work nights_ , Faith surmised,  _you learn to party in the day._

It was, in other words, the best goddamn nightclub Faith had seen in at least three or four years.

 _Don’t judge too quickly_ , Faith reminded herself.  _You haven’t tried the bar yet._

And she wasn’t going to, until she’d worked this thing out for Giles, and also checked with him about what kinds of demon booze were safe to drink.

Somewhere in the back there was a raised chamber, not enclosed but still hard to make out in the almost-dark. Faith took this to be the mysterious ‘big guy’’s throne room. It took a little pushing and shoving to make her way back there, but nobody minded that in a place like this. Faith just kept liking it more.

Some of the guys were a little too red and spiky for her, though. Was she still supposed to care about that? She and Giles hadn’t worked out the whole exclusivity thing yet. He’d probably just follow her lead anyway.

There was another bouncer in front of the steps. This one was human, though he had about three hundred pounds of muscle on him.

“I’m here to see the big guy,” she shouted at the big guy, trying to be heard over the music.

“So?” he rumbled back at her. He had a voice like rolling thunder, or an English Vito Corleone.

“It’s Faith. It’s important.”

The guard turned away from her. Faith didn’t take the opportunity to lock his arms, get him in a stranglehold, and march him up to see whoever the big guy turned out to be. Fortunately, the guard came back and waved her up.

The sound dimmed the moment she set foot on the step. That meant magical soundproofing, which was probably pretty expensive or Giles would have set it up everywhere he went. There was a ring of benches, and on the nearest sat another retired lineman and some little Cockney prick who looked a little familiar. On the farthest sat a little Cockney prick who looked  _really_ familiar.

“Adam Fletcher,” she said.

“Christ,” said the man who was, among other things, the foremost demon smuggler in North London, “Two slayers in three days.”

“I guess you’re big league now,” Faith told him. The ascent had turned her almost all the way around, and over Adam’s head she could see the writhing rainbow mass.

“Look.” He leaned forward so he could fiddle with the tiny straw of whatever ridiculous drink sat on the low table in front of him. “I do business. I don’t move anyone who doesn’t want to. And Slayers scare my customers.”

“Maybe I can see about keeping my people off you for a while,” Faith offered, She put her hands in jacket pockets. Adam was exactly the type to turn his enemy into a broken, beaten body in the street, but it was hard to beleve he wouldn’t make sure the body was a corpse first. And she couldn’t figure what his angle was.

“And what do you want for this kindness?”

“I want to know what Buffy wanted.”

Adam flicked the little straw away. It rolled wiledly around the glass and around again before settling, having disturbed - only a little - the foggy and colorful drink that had filles the glass. He sat back again. “She wanted to know about a family of Tistissa demons I sent down to Tangiers.”

“ _What_ demons?”

“Tistissa.” Adam grinned. “Ripper hasn’t told you about them? Well, they are rare. They’re refugees a couple of times over. Very peaceful and usually very poor. But these paid cash.”

“How much cash?”

“Forty-five thousand pounds, total. In old bills.”

Faith whistled.

“Yeah. No financing, no sponsor, you know. Just cash.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“Y'think I care where the money comes from? They paid.” Adam raised his eyebrows like he was mocking her. “You ask me, there must’ve been someone paying. You don’t earn money like that if you can’t pass. But I don’t know who.”

“Fine,” said Faith. She took a half-step back, then thought again. “That’s all she wanted?”

“Well, she wanted to know where they’d gotten the cash from, and why they wanted to get to Tangiers so badly. I couldn’t tell her.” Adam smiled. He kicked his feet up onto the table, right next to his drink. “And she wanted me not to tell Ripper she was here.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I've Heard It In The Chillest Land" is an independent subsidiary of the bizarrely-titled Madwoman In The Attic series. This series begins roughly seven months following _Chosen_. It completely ignores "Season 8" and diverts somewhat from the canon of the final season of Angel, which occurs simultaneously.  
>  If you haven't read and don't want to read the other parts of this series, "I've Heard It In The Chillest Land" should still read pretty well.

Willow sat there in the waiting room, staring at the floor about ten steps in front of her. With her hands clasped on her lap like that, with her on the edge of tears, this was not the time to confront her about her caked-on makeup or her dye-job red hair. Faith tucked it away, though. It was a conversation that was going to have to happen.

“Hey,” said Kennedy. Kennedy was sitting next to Willow, always a sharp contrast. Willow seemed so small, and Kennedy so enveloping. Faith realized she’d never asked what Faith’s last name was. Unless Kennedy was her last name - no. No way. But Kennedy was standing up, now, and untangling herself from Willow.

“Hey,” said Faith. She waved down the hall toward Buffy’s room. “Is G still in there?”

“Yeah,” said Kennedy. She crossed her arms. “But Buffy isn’t.”

“Is she-”

“They took her back in for more surgery. I still don’t know what’s happening. But, you know, not a good sign, right?”

Faith rubbed at the bridge of her nose. Her knuckles ached. Hating hospitals was such a cliche. She had better reasons than most, though. “Listen,” she told Kennedy. “I’ve, uh, got to talk to him. It’s good to see you and all.”

“And then you’re leaving again?”

“What?”

“Giles is in here. I don’t know what your thing with him is, and far be it from me to judge, right? But - he’s just sitting in that room, staring at her empty bed. He needs someone and you’re not here.”

Faith’s hands stilled. _If I were going to punch someone,_ Faith wondered,  _would it be better or worse to do it in a hospital?_ But Kennedy didn’t deserve that. And she was here, after all, for Willow, and she didn’t have to be.

“I guess it’s up to you,” said Kennedy, and she stepped out of Faith’s way.

Sitting a long way away from Willow, trying to find her own little corner, was Dawn, as gangly and freakishly straight-haired as always. Faith ignored her. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, she went and found Giles, who turned out to be right where Kennedy said he’d be. He sat there in a cheap chair next to Buffy’s empty cot and he stared at it. Without looking up, he said, “They took her back for more surgery.”

“I heard.”

“I don’t - that can’t be good. You know.”

Faith crossed the little room and grabbed his arm. “Hey, look at me.”

He didn’t.

“Look at me,” she demanded.

He did, slowly, though his eyes were a little unfocused.

“You can’t do anything about that. Whether she - look. That’s up to the doctors now. But,” she said, offering him a cold, toothy smile, “Whoever did this is out there right now. We can do something about that.”

When his eyes did focus, they had gotten back that earlier coldness. “What have you found?”

“Buffy talked to your buddy Adam Fletcher.”

Giles’s eyes flashed, and Faith grinned back.

“Yeah. She was tracking a family of demons. Uh - Tistissa demons.”

“Brood,” said Giles.

“What?”

“A family of Tistissa demons is called a brood.”

“Wow,” said Faith. “That’s  _so cool_ . Anyway, Adam said the demons paid him to go to Tangiers.”

“What’s in Tangiers?”

“Dunno,” said Faith. “Except, I think Buffy must’ve been there. Fought them, and headed back here to see how they got there.”

Giles shifted in his seat so he could stare at the window. “I’ve never heard of Tistissa demons fighting anyone. But I don’t know much about them.”

“Adam said they were poor. Said someone must have paid him to do it.”

At that, Giles nodded heavily. “When I worked in the Academy, there was a task force tasked with monitoring destitute demon populations. For, ah, signs of budding violent sentiment, as it were.”

“But you don’t know them?”

“Ah.” Giles turned back to her. He wasn’t smiling at all, anymore, but his words had a touch of humor: “I wasn’t part of the task force. But I know who was.”

Faith felt that sick feeling like she was about to get really bad news.

“Roger Wyndham-Price,” he concluded.

Ah, fuck.

Ah, fuckety fuck fuck. Fuck.

\---

The receptionist at Wolfram and Hart remembered her. Faith liked making an impression. This time, she asked to be forwarded to Mister Wyndham-Pryce. And  _yes_ , she assured the receptionist,  _it’s still important_ .

“Faith?” prompted Wesley over the phone. “Is this about Buffy? She’s not-”

“No. Back in surgery,” she said. “This is related, though.” And she explained about the Tistissa demons, and about Adam Fletcher, who Wesley had never heard of, and tried to hit the high points about Buffy’s weird transcontinental search. By this point, she was back in a taxi and the driver was giving her weird looks in the rear-view mirror. “Roleplay,” she told him. “My boyfriend gets off on this fantasy shit.”

The driver stopped meeting her eyes. Across the headset, Wesley sputtered.

“Anyway,” she said, “Giles thought you might know something about it.”

“I’m afraid we don’t talk much about work. Or anything else,” he said. That tone in his voice was self-pity, like he knew real pain because his daddy never loved him. Like she wouldn’t have killed to have that much of a father figure.

_Oh, right_ , Faith realized. She decided that was a bad train of thought.

“It occurs to me that I have some old papers of his from around that time,” said Wesley. “I’ll go through them and see what I can dig up.”

“Cool,” she says. “Is Angel coming?”

“Angel? Ah, Angel is, I suppose, occupied. Can’t get away.”

The taxi pulls up. Faith props the phone against her shoulder and goes digging through her wallet for cash. “This isn’t some flesh wound,” she says.

“I know,” Wesley says. “I - you have to understand. Angel makes his own decisions, these days.”

Faith shrugged, nearly dislodging the phone. “He’s not  _my_ one true love. But I’m still going to kick his ass if that’s what B needs.”

There was a long, long silence, during which Faith finished paying the driver and watched him speed away. “Faith,” said Wesley, “I’m really quite proud of you.”

“Yeah?” said Faith. “You too, dork.”

She ended the call on that note and put the phone back in her jacket pocket. Up the stairway in front of her, three floors up, was Buffy’s flat. She hadn’t searched it very thoroughly before.

The door had been forced open. Not jimmied, like Faith preferred, but smashed until the latch gave way. In the process, the frame had splintered. The door wouldn’t close right again until someone got a carpenter out to do some repairs.

Faith checked both ways again before she pushed the door open, though she got the feeling this wasn’t a neighborhood where people called the police a whole lot. Buy’s flat had been ransacked. She checked her watch. She’d walked out o this same door two hours ago.

That was a damn big coincidence.

The cards on the dresser had been upended. The letter from Giles sat, creased but unfolded, on the floor. The sheets had been torn off the bed. her computer was gone. What clothing she had brought was strewn across the floor.

 _What would Giles do?_ Faith immediately wondered. Giles would immediately comment on the sloppiness of the ransacking. He would decide that made them amateurs. but well-informed amateurs.

So, deciding they were amateurs, Faith immediately set to work searching all the places amateurs might not have thought to.

The medicine cabinet was bare. There was nothing behind the mirror over the bathroom sink, except enough dust and cobwebs to fill a spooky mansion in a Scooby-Doo story. There was, however, another piece of paper behind the dresser. Perhaps it fallen there by accident. It was a list:

\- _Clammy skin_

\- _Scaly rash_

\- _Late fever_

 _\- Loss of mental function_

\- _Death from 5 days (Age: 4) to 6 weeks (age: 23)_

Her phone rang again. She checked the screen:  Wolfram & Hart .

She answered. “What?”

“Faith, it’s Wesley.”

“Wes,” she said, tucking the scrap of paper into her jacket pocket. “That was fast.”

“Yes, well, I had a hunch.” He sounded way too proud of himself. “I suspected that Wolfram and Hart might have been keeping tabs on the tistissa demons much as the Council was. Their motives were probably somewhat different, of course.”

Probably not as different as Wesley wanted to pretend. Faith checked under the bed, where Buffy had stored her suitcase; the suitcase was completely empty.

“Anyway, Wolfram and Hart has been tracking four Tistissa broods - one in Shanghai, one in London, and two in Tangiers - including one that just relocated from London.”

“That’s interesting,” said Faith. She probed around on the walls and shelves of the closet, but found nothing.

“Yes, quite. Especially since every member of the two broods in Tangiers died in the last two months.”

Faith gave up. She gave the entire apartment one last once-over, and then went out the door. “That B’s work?”

“The files don’t say,” Wesley told her. “I’ve only got one other piece of useful information. The Tistissa brood’s patriarch, just before they left London, met with some group called the Order of Ascalon. After, of course, the lance Saint George used to kill the dragon.”

_ Oh, of course. “ _ So, who’re they?”

“I have no idea,” said Wesley. “There’s nothing in the files. Except...”

Faith stopped on the steps. “What?”

“The same files were accessed last week. By Angel.”

“The fuck?”

“Yes, well,” said Wesley, “My sentiments are-”

Something hard hit Faith in the head. The cell phone went flying out of her hand. She stumbled down two or three steps. She was hit again, but she’d got her guard up.

Her attacker was a white man, no older than she was but much bigger, with jeans and a black hoodie. He wore brass knuckles. That was why her head throbbed so badly.

He came at her again. She stepped back to dodge. He pursued her down the stairs. She switched directions abruptly and lunged past him and - before he could turn - grabbed onto the hood and threw. He even managed to keep his feet under him most of the way down. She went after him.

As he tried to come up, Faith used her knee to smash his face back into the concrete. Then she fell upon him and started really whooping his ass.

A second attacker threw her off the first. She tried to roll out of it but misplaced her foot and ended up twisting her ankle instead. Her second attacker was black, but he was just as tall as the first one and identically dressed. This one had a knife.

Unlike White, Black obviously knew his way around a street fish. He kept his feet under him and his knife in front of him. He respected her enough to approach only cautiously.

 _ Screw this,  _ she thought. She was a goddamn Slayer. She charged.

Black stumbled back, surprised. She twisted around the knife and lunged at his body. He had the presence of mind to slash at her, off balance. The motherfucking sharp blade, went right into her thigh and up, up, and deep into her side. Right through her leather jacket. She _liked_ that jacket. She put her fist right in his jaw.

But the pain tin her side stopped her from following through. She stepped back, instead, and hoped he’d come at her again. Black, his jaw fractured, glanced away from her to see his friend, White, whose face was bleeding and whose ribs were smashed. They looked back at her.

She smiled.

They ran.

She tried to go after them, but her ankle and her thigh didn’t approve.

Instead, she hobbled over to her phone, still sitting at the bottom of the stairs.

“-aith? Faith? Are you there?”

“Sorry, Wes,” she said. “I think I have to call 999.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews and comments of all sorts, whether bad or good, short or long, are always appreciated.


End file.
